


Oranges And Memories

by crediniaeth, treelines (horchata)



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-01
Updated: 2004-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 20:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crediniaeth/pseuds/crediniaeth, https://archiveofourown.org/users/horchata/pseuds/treelines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orlando drives. Out of the hussle of LA and just drives. Doesn't know where he's going. Just drives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oranges And Memories

**Author's Note:**

> written with horchata in 2004 as part of the defunct livejournal community tig_me. Viggo is voiced by horchata, Orlando is voiced by crediniaeth.

Orlando drives. Out of the hussle of LA and just drives. Doesn't know where he's going. Just drives.

He finds himself in Topanga Canyon. He smiles at the memory when Doodle told him once about an american TV show that had a girl named Topanga. He never thought it by that name. It was always Viggo's. Like God had carved this place out of the earth and had created all this just for him.

Just for Viggo.

He drives up and down the streets, battling with himself whether he should pull into the driveway. He knows someone's there... the grass is short. Another memory... barbeques at Viggo's house with the rest of the LA fellowship. He wonders if this is Henry's weekend with Exene, or if Viggo is in Spain filming that movie with Gael. What ever is it, he decides to take the chance.

He parks in the driveway and walks to the front porch. He chooses to use the knocker on the door instead of the doorbell. In this modern world Orlando still tries to be old fashioned.

The wait sometimes is harder than the choices before.

 

**It isn't the cold ringing sound that makes Viggo's afternoon all the more solitary, but the silence that comes after it. He's exhaled softly into chill of early morning. No one but Henry, back from late-night _bacanales_ with friends comes to his door at 5:13 in the morning, expecting effort.**

Viggo considers listening to see if their retreating footsteps would identify the person waiting at the door, at the last moment rushing out in a blaze of energy just to frighten whoever stood below his home-made dream catcher but spontaneity has never been his ally.

He rises.

Orlando sees a figure move behind the sheer curtains that shield Viggo's living room from the early morning sun... and smiles. He's not sure what to expect, and the thought of it scares him a little. He didn't mean to wake the sleeping giant, he just needed some companionship. Something different than what the plasticness of LA offers 24/7. Sure... he has Dom and Doodle and Billy sometimes, but Viggo's more stable. More certain.

More real.

The door opens, and Viggo's there. He smiles, even though he can tell there's still sleep in his eyes.

"Hey."

 

**Viggo considers throwing elvish at him, twisting old bonds and memories, oddness of it all. He wonders if Orlando has only become fractured because of the sloth Viggo has acquired after too many siestas, the cobwebs distortion, or if it was what he'd thought all along.**

A morning dove calls from somewhere over Orlando's left shoulder. Viggo decides pleasantries are for mid-day meetings.

"Why are you here?"

 

Orlando looks over Viggo's shoulder and sees the house shrouded in that hazy light that comes from the recently woken. He processes Viggo's question, and as always, doesn't know the proper response. His presence there isn't out of need or desire, well...

"I hadn't seen you in a while. Ridley let me go for a week, and thought I'd drop by. Shit, I'm sorry for waking you man. I keep forgetting about time differences and all that. I can come back later; let you get back to sleep."

 

**"Always too eager to please," Viggo reprimands, and steps back from the door, walking on through his house. If Orlando wants to follow, he will. He always has.**

He allows himself a generous yawn while he weaves around rotting boards and handing mobiles. He would feel a guilt pang had it not been Orlando, if someone else from New Zealand had chosen to visit. He'd have felt guilty, or have begun roping things off, placing half-finished carpet experiments and opened boxes of golden raisins behind canvases and couch cushions.

Viggo steals an orange from the terracotta bowl next to the garish radio on the floor and steps through his back door onto whatever excuse California gave its invaders for a lawn.

 

Viggo always strikes Orlando as a mystery. A mystery wrapped inside an enigma wrapped in an artist wrapped in a teddy bear. Orlando counts that from his experiences that he himself will never be able to match. He hears the words, he watches...

He follows.

Orlando looks around the house and sees how much it's changed, and how much it hasn't. Pictures on the mantle of the unused fireplace, canvases stacked next to each other on the floor, Henry's burgundy Stratocaster leaning against the sofa. All remind him how this house is used, is loved, and how his flat in the city is as bare as a tomb.

He finds Viggo in a plastic lounge chair on the wooden deck overlooking the lawn, which is just starting to turn brown. He finds himself sitting in the lounge next to it. _Probably Henry's_, he thinks to himself.

There's a silence between the two, comfortable with a twinge of anticipation. Finally, Orli breaks it. "I saw Hidalgo. It was really good."

Viggo doesn't respond as much as smile slightly. Orlando continued. "I wanted to be at the premiere, but we were still working on Troy. Heard you, Elijah, and Dom had a blast though. I'm glad it's all worked out for you."

Viggo keeps smiling, and Orli is at a loss.

 

**He peels the last bit of rind from the fruit and squeezes it, watching the citrus droplets mingle with what's left of the marine layer.**

"We've only ever just started, Orlando. There are diversions that make us feel like we've gone someplace, done something outside of the cage we live in, but the truth is that at the end of the day we return to our beds, and wait for the next morning when we might be able to crawl past the monotony of this fucking beginning."

Turns to Orlando, taking in wide eyes and semi-blank stare, offers: "Orange?"

 

Orli takes the fruit, doesn't eat it right away, but instead tries to take in what is really unknown. Nearly too poetic for his child-like mind.

And then it suddenly hits him.

"People love you for stuff like that Vig. They love you as the hero. They love you as the artist. They love you for wanting nothing more than to sit on your deck and think about whether you want tacos or burritos for dinner."

And then it suddenly hits him, although not as sudden as the previous revelation because he's known it for a while.

"They love me because I'm nothing more than a pretty face. Someone to drool over. They don't think I have talent. You have talent. They love you for that."

Orli swallows the fleshy wedge.

 

**Sometimes Viggo wonders if Orlando has forgotten he is a photographer, someone who searches for the subtleties and cultivates them. Viggo hears Orlando.**

But he won't respond to that just yet. He replaces Orlando's orange slice.

"Do you want talent, Orlando?"

 

"Well..." Orlando starts. "I thought I always had it."

This time Orli doesn't eat the slice whole, he breaks it in half. He decides to savor whatever there is, and nearly thanks the orange for growing.

_How completely elvish of you._

"Guildhall thought I had it, or else they wouldn't have graduated me. Peter thought I had it, or else I wouldn't have been Legolas. Even Ridley thinks I have it, or else I wouldn't be where I am now. I shouldn't care what the critics think anyway. Bloody bunch of wankers they are."

He focuses on the lone quarter of fruit in his hand. "But I do care. Sometimes."

 

**"Mm. But that wasn't the question."**

Viggo rises, reaches hands up to a hazy sky, feeling triceps and brachialis stretching tired arms up and out in a circle that made him flash back to exercises in stuffy barracks in a hemisphere he'd rather not have left.

Orlando cradles his orange like a dying swallow. Viggo would think it pathetic if he wasn't so moved. He departs from his usual stride and runs in and out quickly, taking care to not kick out at Henry's technological invasion of his head space and tosses a full, ripe orange to his yard-mate. Nurse a wound with full hands, be they of beer or something of a gentler sort.

 

Orli smiles at the gift he's received and begins to peel it, even though the thought of rind underneath his fingernails disconcerts him.

"It's what I thought the question was, Viggo," he says with earnest. He turns and looks at his companion. "What's your opinion of me? Do you think I've changed since New Zealand?"

He turns again to look out over the lawn, unsure if he would be able to survive watching the onslaught of Viggo he knew may or may not come.

 

**"I called Bean yesterday," Viggo said, walking around Orlando and sitting on the ground sideways, back pressed against the right leg of both the lounge and who sat in it. "Henry made me; said that he'd called two days back while I was in San Diego and asked if I'd run off to Niger yet. He started the conversation with an old dig of ours--grasping at straws."**

Viggo held out his perfectly peeled orange to Orlando. "Do you know _The Great Gatsby_?"

 

Orli knew that he should have pressed his question, but also knew that Viggo was Viggo and would get to matters in his own time.

"I've heard of it, but never read it. Dom told me it was long and boring. But I bet you have a different view, don't you?"

 

**Viggo shrugs and starts scrutinizing the orange. "The original was over one thousand pages long and Fitzgerald managed to scrape it down to just under one hundred, small print. It's about the eventual fucking up of the American dream, loss of the Eden behind the capitalist ambition of the forefathers. Boring shit to Europeans, I'm sure.**

"His name was Jay Gatsby. Handsome man constantly chasing after the romantic dream of the past, the gauzy, pristine, five-years-ago past that seems so much more desirable when gazed through rose-tinted hindsight. Disillusioned to the opulence around him, constantly luring that bit of a dream back. You can't bring back the past."

Viggo threw his rind out onto the lawn. "Bean wasn't funny, Orlando. Felt like a high school reunion; old jokes, old small-talk. I don't expect that from you."

 

And there it was. The punch line that has more to it. It hit Orlando like a gale-force wind. And made him smile.

"He was like that in Malta too, except I went along with it. It felt comfortable."

Then there was silence. Orlando wanted to say more, just say anything, anything at all.

_Oh, fuck it to hell._ "It reminded me of you."

_Shit._

 

**Viggo smiles softly. He didn't want to use direct language, it was so insulting. But sometimes...**

"Bean is not Gatsby, Orlando." He rises and walks back inside.

 

Orlando almost doesn't follow Viggo inside, but a split second decision makes him get up off that squeaky chair and go inside.

Letting his eyes adjust to the half-light, he stands in the doorway and watches Viggo fill the tea kettle in the kitchen.

"Would I be Gatsby then?"

 

**"In every role you play I see New Zealand. I see you wishing for different costars, casting them into your head. Who is Sean, who is Elijah, who is Liv and Bean and Dom. You play to phantoms. The green light at the end of the dock."**

Viggo calmly retrieves two mugs from the cupboard, moving aside a thin book that was placed between the measuring cups and dinner plates three weeks earlier. He's taken the chipped one for himself and placed the tea bags -- 'Orange Spice' -- in each. The novel is handed to Orlando along with the blue-patterned cup.

 

Sure enough... it's _Gatsby_. "You are right you know. I can't get it out of my head sometimes. And when I finally do, then someone like Bean comes along and brings it back."

He looked at the book, and then his mug. "Fran talked to me about it during reshoots for Return of the King. She was worried I'd lose myself in it, that I'd stay Legolas my whole life... and look at me! I've gone and done it! It's either the sword or the bow. I can't get away from it."

He finds a place to sit at the dining room table. "Maybe I should try working on stage or something. Anything to get me out of the mess I've put myself in."

 

**It amuses Viggo that Orlando's found the one spot not completely covered in oil pastel or spray paint and taken it for himself. Viggo sits on the counter. "It's not the roles, Orlando. You could wear a blonde wig and a tunic once more and there'd still be room for a unique character that doesn't hold his head erect or furrow his eyebrows. Stop looking back."**

Viggo feels the barb himself, as if Orlando'd said it. It stings to him, strangely, but words cannot be eaten. He picks up his orange once more; tries to lose himself in the veins the rind forgot.

 

Orli should feel annoyed with himself, that he's caused Viggo to be so forward. He revels in that fact, that Viggo is the consummate artist. Always uses the flourish instead of the knife. This time though, the knife is out in full force.

And Orlando feels it. Right down to the quick. Just as if he was the peel Viggo is now so intent on.

"But what if I don't know how to anymore Viggo," he asks with the desperation of a child trying to please an adult. "Nothing can compare with that, believe me I've tried. It's the friendship. We were all 'friends', like close if-you-asked-me-I'd-die-for-you friends. Nothing's like that anymore."

 

**"Nothing is easy for anyone, Orlando," Viggo concedes. "I talked with Bean for four hours." **

**The kettle whistled and Viggo hopped off the counter, placing a hand on Orlando's shoulder for a brief moment before offering to pour him some.**

Viggo always knows how to get Orli out of one of his moods, and did it again perfectly. He raises his cup and lets Viggo pour the steaming liquid into it.

"What is this thing with you and oranges lately?"

 

**"Citrus, like visitors, arouses the senses." He winces a little. That had sounded like a cheap take-out fortune cookie.**

Viggo gingerly sets down the teakettle and the chipped mug from Las Vegas and shifts bits and pieces of his first livelihood around the room. Always making room for himself in his own home when Orlando fits perfectly.

"Forgive my belated manners. How are you?"

 

Orli just can't help but smile. After all that soul searching, then comes the pleasantries.

"Good. Morocco's been really good to me this time around. No falling out of helicopters this time. No more flashbacks."

He gingerly sips at his tea, amazed that it's at the right strength. He enjoys it immensely.

 

**"I've only ever seen you sit still with a 'fucking good cuppa.' Good to see I haven't forgotten what you taught me." Viggo sips at his mug, half-heartedly dancing his lips around the chip in the rim. "How's Kate?"**

 

"Kate's fine. Haven't seen her much though since she's been doing that movie with that Spacey fellow. But it's ok. She needs to have her own life. Her own success."

He stops. He knows that Viggo will notice. So he continues, because that's the right thing to do. "And that's all right."

 

**Viggo smiles, undecided between proud and melancholy. "It's a bitter pill to swallow, Orlando," he murmurs. What he wants to say next is too straightforward, and he's had enough of talking directly. Exhausting to say something straight out, better to use more words and inference instead of wasting breath on with curt responses.**

 

"I wouldn't expect anything less," Orlando replies. "She's got her own thing with Blue Crush, Tad Hamilton and what ever this next project is called, and I've got my own worlds to deal with."

Another pause.

"And to be frank, I think she likes it that way. And I do too."

 

**"To butcher another fortune cookie: Absence makes the heart grow wiser."**

Viggo rises, placing his mug in the sink and tiptoeing around the odds and ends of his dining room and glances out of the window around the hanging glass and feather sculptures. "It's going to rain today."

 

Orlando follows him (like he always does), and stands next to Viggo. He looks out the window at the small clouds on the horizon, and takes another sip of his tea. "It might. Imagine what the traffic would be in LA if it rained. Glad I'm out here instead of back there."

Orlando doesn't really know what to say next, instead he stands in the silence, waiting for something to fill it.

 

**Viggo has missed this warmth. He has stood beside youth and exuberance in almost-rain so many times before that his posture slumps rightward and the minute hairs below the sleeve of his paint-stained t-shirt seem to reach out and hum with the closeness of human flesh.**

He can smell it. This will be a grand storm, a thunderstorm. One of skewed light play and darkened shadows at noon. The ions in the air will make Orlando's hair disjointed and frizzy and Viggo will have to restrain himself from running eager hands through it, like he had before. That particular innocence is lost to them both.

"We should open the windows."

 

A devilish smile winds its way across Orlando's features. The smile stays as he turns to look straight into Viggo's eyes.

"Most definitely. Thunderstorms are my favorite."

They execute the plan with an extreme precision. Going through each room in this house gave Orlando a sense of completion, something he would never get in LA, or even London. This place has always called to him and told him, 'You're welcome here. Stay a while.' and 'Why are you leaving?' when ever time grew short.

Today was a long day.

 

**Halfway between the chaos of Henry's bedroom and the chaos of the living room, the mischief had brushed past Viggo's senses and he'd snatched it up with vigor. Now even his hair felt strange and his smile devious. In five minutes the dogs around Viggo's home had silenced, the morning dove departed. A _tempest_ was brewing, and he said so. Orlando's excited grin woke something else inside of him.**

He leapt across a box of photographs, rummaged through the closet behind it to produce two very weathered umbrellas and a poncho for himself. "Porch?" he grinned.

 

Orlando took an umbrella. "Lead on."

It wasn't long before the two were back on the deck, waiting in silence for the storm like two little children waiting for their father to come home from work. It was exciting, thrilling, and utterly insane.

But it was Viggo, so it made it all right in the end.

A rumble was heard coming from the south. "You ready?"

 

**Viggo grinned wide. "Not quite."**

He leaned his umbrella on the metal stand by the miapora sapling and hefted the lawn chair over his shoulder. He placed it in the center of dying grass, over the gopher hole (for both protection and spite of the rodent who had eaten his cucumbers and bean plants) and daintily opened his umbrella, twirling it a bit.

The wind blew dandelion seeds across his bare feet. This would be a storm to remember.

 

Orlando follows suit, but doesn't open the tattered umbrella.

"I like the rain," he says calmly.

A smile flashes as quickly as the first lightening bolt. He then closes his eyes and turns his face to the heavens, welcoming the downpour.

 

** _Three... Four... Five..._ ** ** And thunder sounded.**

"Not yet, Elf," Viggo teases. "We've still a few minutes until the fun starts."

Viggo feels alive again, alive like he has not felt since he lost sight of the last vestige of New Zealand from the metal plane that took them from that magical place. He realizes now why Orlando keeps one foot planted firmly in the impossible dream, one hand reaching out towards the green light.

He tosses his umbrella away.

"I like the rain, too."

 

"I thought you might. You're not the one to take the safe road Vig."

It's a phenomenon, where it just looks like the clouds can no longer support their weight and just... fall. It's not above them yet, just in front of them. So close that Orlando reaches out to touch it, even though he knows it's impossible.

But with Viggo at his side, nothing really seems impossible, even distance.

"If I don't say it later," Orlando begins. "Thanks."

 

**He says nothing, only gently grabs Orlando's hand as he brings it back toward his body. Viggo feels Orlando's eyes snap over, but he tilts his chin at the thunderhead and the lightning. A droplet of water, blown by the now-fierce wind falls onto his cheek.**

His grin is expectant. "It begins."

 

The wind whips Orlando's now blackened hair every which direction. It does the same with Viggo's. The umbrellas threaten to play the part of tumbleweeds and fly across the grass. The raindrops continue their assault with a fiery intensity.

And Orlando loves every moment of it.

He screams out loud, an almost primal welcome to the storm, beckoning it to do what it wants with him and his companion.

He turns to Viggo, his eyes reflecting the lightening in the sky. "Isn't this great?"

 

**Viggo howls in response, full-on _howls_, like the storm had brought something intense and forbidden, something to celebrate within and through nature. He laughs and joins Orlando in his mirth, suddenly wanting to race the lightning through the sky, because right now he'd have fucking flown higher and burned brighter than any storm before.**

And, God, when had Orlando been any more desirable? Eyes bright, finally free; this is what he'd been missing, delicious hunger for rain clouds and wildness. Viggo would say 'unleashed', but the wind would carry his words to unkind ears before he'd be able to justify the right in the statement.

Instead, with fear of loss to the torment and liberty he threads their fingers and holds on tighter.

 

He watches as Viggo takes his hand, and doesn't mind one bit the comfort that it brings. Viggo grounds him to reality like no other person can, save his Mum. It's pleasure, mirth, and joy all wrapped into one spectacular gift.

A gift just for him.

The rain falls on his face. It just keeps coming like it will never stop. He doesn't want it to stop, because that means that this has to stop. Whatever this is, Orlando never wants to end.

It's a new memory to cherish.


End file.
